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SMEs are mostly guided by the owners’ characteristics which is an indicator of the level of decisions taken in the firm. Access to credit is a prerequisite for a high performance of an SME. The paper aimed at establishing the empirical link between entrepreneurs and firm characteristics and access to bank financing by SMEs in Eldoret town. Descriptive and explanatory research designs were employed in the study. A chi-square test of association was used to determine the relationship between study variables. The study findings indicated that gender and number of employees had a significant influence on access to bank financing. Male entrepreneurs are more likely to get bank financing compared to their female counterparts, while an increase in the number of employees increases the success rate of getting bank financing. However, age, education, business form, number of years of operation, stage of business and average turnover were found to be insignificant in obtaining funding. The study concluded that entrepreneur characteristics namely gender and relation to business and firm characteristics specifically structure of the business, economic sector and the average turnover determines the likelihood of banks financing SMEs. Entrepreneurial and firm characteristics were found to be important in access to bank financing. The study recommended that government and other service providers incorporate additional simplified components to their training packages to cover such areas as bookkeeping and development of business plans. Banks should develop lending policies which are friendly to Small and Medium Enterprise contexts. Keywords: Entrepreneur, firm characteristics, access, bank financing, SMEs |
